Item — HN Reader

Originally "computer" was used to refer to people who would "compute". They were all replaced by electronic computers.

I don't think many would claim that the world would be a better place if regulations were put in place to limit electronic computers in order to keep human computers employed.

1 comments

1 - Not the same situation. No one stole already-done work from the people who used to "compute" to create the computers themselves, or its output.

2 - You're twisting my argument. I don't care if artists are employed or not, or that some jobs are transitioned out from the economy. I care that people who put in work get the value proportional to that work. You should, too.

When you use one of these AIs that have been fed millions of images in order to train them and generate an effective output, you are necessarily consuming the images themselves, without which the AI wouldn't do anything. In that process, the artists - whose copyrighted work is, again, fundamental to the development of the tool - have been paid nada, they have not even consented to the use of their images in the training process. How does that track?

This would be a very different conversations if these AIs only used public domain art, of which there's plenty. But then again, it wouldn't be much profitable, would it?

I was an academically trained professional artist who is now an engineer. I "stole" work all the time as an artist by absorbing and fusing the specific elements that I found to be neat in all my heroes and idols. I was considered to be very creative and talented by everyone around me. This wasn't some shameful secret I held. This is exactly what artists are meant to do when they're encouraged to "study art history".

This isn't some hypothetical. I went through the art portfolio scene and survived 4 years of critiques - I know about the sacred process called the "creative process". None of my and my peers' work would exist without the inspiration of the centuries of art work that stood before us. This is what we call art in the industry and by the public masses. The criteria you established for "why AI art isn't art" applies directly to the "conventional art". So I have to ask, why is AI art different?

Should artists be forced to live without the internet nor access to the outside, so that they can never get inspiration from other artists?

Of course not. So why is it different for an AI?

No difference at all. Let's read books written by an AI. Play games designed and coded by an AI. Enjoy art painted by an AI. Debate with an AI on the internet. Listen to music composed and performed by an AI. Pretty soon, let's watch movies directed, edited and played by an AI. In the process, let's give the same AI also all the prompts, so it can learn what we want to read, play, enjoy, listen to and watch. Let's remove ourselves from the whole picture. Enjoy decay.

Yeah, this is the direction I worry about. Why bother being creative when the AIs "do it better"? How many people will bother paying for human art when AIs "do it better"? Will human creativity be relegated to a tiny niche in a sea of AI content? Will this all but erase paid human art except for highly specialized and narrow niches? Am I too pessimistic?

Computers have been playing chess way better than humans for many years, yet it has not prevented people from playing chess and enjoying it. Also human chess game have way more viewers than computer games despite objectively being lower quality.

Are you implying that the process of training the AI with images, which usually involves statistic models, is in any way similar to the process by which a human brain creates images? Or that the way people look up references is similar to the way AIs use images? Because if that's the case, I'm afraid you have a very odd idea of how these AIs function.

Otherwise, you have to agree that we're talking about apples and oranges here.

AIs don't get "inspiration". They get the source images they need to function. An AI also can't produce an output that's outside of the realm of their dataset.

I theorize (but cannot prove) that the processes underpinning creativity in the human mind are exactly the same statistical processes that ML models use.

Think about it: you live your life. You experience things. You experience art, and experience emotions or have interactions with other humans grounded in that art. You form connections with certain styles or techniques.

If you then turn around to create art, you form in your mind a general idea of what you want to create. You then draw on your past experiences to actually create the physical art. What process other than statistical extraction from your mind could it come from?

For sure I believe there are things that we don't understand about the human mind. I think the impact of drug use on art creation is very interesting, for example. It indicates that random chemical processes in our brains can play a large determining role in the actions we take (and in this case, the things that we create).

But to say that humans do not use some sort of inbaked statistical world model in the creative process seems wrong to me.

My creative process as a character illustrator is different than the creative process for a watercolor painter or a graphic designer. If I forced you to answer with a yes/no, would you confidently agree that their processes are different enough to be considered "apples and oranges"? I'm not sure what such statements establish, if anything at all.

And if I told you that, as someone who has done art for decades, that the human creative process is very similar to how an AI is trained on existing images, would you believe me and move on?

> Because if that's the case, I'm afraid you have a very odd idea of how these AIs function.

The design of neutral nets, by definition, were derived from the workings of the human brain.

That's the thing - no, they weren't. They were inspired by how neurons communicate with each other. But that's not "the workings of the human brain", you're making an incorrect abstraction, same with these AI.

Why should I believe you and move on? "making art for decades" doesn't make you an authority on any of the relevant subjects: "how art is processed in the brain" nor "how AI processes these images." I don't think you understand the fundamental differences between the process of looking up references/inspiration and kitbashing.